While other MediaPost newsletters and articles remain free to all ... our new Research Intelligencer service is reserved for paid subscribers ...

Subscribe today to gain access to the every Research Intelligencer article we publish as well as the exclusive daily newsletter, full access to The MediaPost Cases, first-look research and daily insights from Joe Mandese, Editor in Chief.

Gamut Data Reveals Characteristics Of Fraudulent Ad Impressions

Cox Media Group’s Gamut division on Friday released data that analyzes the characteristics of fraudulent sites.

The numbers show that when fraud filters are not in place, measurements
that seem positive are often inflated by bots. Sites with high levels of fraud were analyzed to have a higher viewability percentage, meaning that those committing fraud have become increasingly
clever in getting advertisers to pay a higher premium for viewable impressions.

The study was conducted by comparing the results from fraud sites known for low or high fraud. The group
analyzed the campaign metrics using Gamut's measurement provider, Moat, which determined the sites to test based on historic data. The tool analyzes viewability, as well as mouse
movements that they believe are human and nonhuman traffic to and on websites.

Gamut set up ad placements on publisher sites that analysts thought would have a propensity to create a lower
amount of fraud, a higher amount of fraud, and a higher amount of fraud with the ability to optimize the advertisement and change the settings in real-time.

advertisement

advertisement

Among the ad placements known to
have low fraud rates, Gamut saw that 98.41% of the 489,000 impressions analyzed were identified as humans rather than bots. The in-view percentage, however, was 23.50%, and in-view time 15.09%.

About 68.04% of the 355,048 impressions analyzed were identified as human on sites known for high fraud. On these sites the in-view percentage was 59.55% and in-view time 34.12%.

High
in-view percentages are important to advertisers, but bots have been programmed to be smart enough to mimic human behavior. Advertisers really need to look at metrics other than clicks, such as
interaction rates that show when the mouse moves within the frame of the ad for at least half a second. This behavior indicates that someone read the content.

High fraud sites looked to have
high in-view time and interaction rates, which means those committing fraud are creating fake-interactions like a real human, such as moving the mouse and scrolling up and down the page.

With
high fraud sites, there is an increased percentage delivered to outdated browsers, as well as an increase in no referral. Humans always navigate from site to site, so the chances of referral
information is high, whereas a bot will not be referred.